- April 20, 2024
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After a six day trial, a jury deliberated for approximately two-and-a-half hours today before finding William Gregory, guilty as charged, according to a the office of the state attorney.
Gregory was charged with two counts of first-degree murder with a firearm, burglary while armed with a firearm and assault or battery, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, in relation to the death of Skyler Meekins and Dan Dyer.
According to Assistant State Attorneys Jacquelyn Roys and Mark Johnson, the penalty phase is set for Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. The maximum penalty for the case is death.
The case was tried by Roys and Johnson before Circuit Judge William A. Parsons, in Daytona Beach.
Below is a story that appeared in October, in the Palm Coast Observer, when the jury selection was still taking place in Flagler County. A mistrial was declared at that time, and the trial was moved.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
Set back behind a rope swing and majestic shade trees on John Anderson Highway, the small home is empty, except for MaryAnn Meekins, 84. She lives alone, caring for her dogs. She waits for customers for her boarding kennel. And she waits for word from the courthouse, where she will soon be summoned to testify against the man who is accused of murdering her granddaughter.
Jury selection began Monday, Oct. 4, at the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center, in a double-homicide trial in which William Gregory is accused of killing Skyler Dawn Meekins and Daniel Dyer in the early hours of Aug. 21, 2007. MaryAnn could provide key testimony. The result could be the death penalty.
THE HOUSE
The night before the crime, MaryAnn had a full house. The home has four bedrooms, and they were all full. Charles “Huck” Meekins, MaryAnn’s husband, slept in the room nearest the kitchen. MaryAnn slept in the room across the living room because she had a hard time sleeping and woke up several times each night.
“I get up every two or three hours,” she says. “Did then, have for ages, still do. But when I sleep, I sleep really, really deep.”
Sharing the south wall of MaryAnn’s room was Skyler, 17.
THE FATHER
Skyler had became pregnant at 15, during her sophomore year at Flagler Palm Coast High School. She didn’t tell anyone until it became obvious at about eight months.
“Of course, that wasn’t what the family chose — of course not,” MaryAnn says. “But that was it. Kids make mistakes.”
The pregnancy caused a stir on John Anderson Highway, where three houses in a row were inhabited by members of the Meekins family. Skyler’s father, Charles “Hap” Meekins, would not allow Skyler and the father, William “Billy” Gregory, who was 22 at the time, to live under his roof, so it was arranged that they would stay next door, with MaryAnn and Huck, where there was more room, anyway.
“She was an excellent mother,” MaryAnn says. “She asked if Billy could live here when she came home with the baby, with idea of him helping, which he never did. He didn’t work, either. His boss would come by to give him a ride to work, but he didn’t go out there.”
Several months after the baby was born, Skyler and Billy got in an argument.
“I never interfered with anything personal with Skyler, and she said very little,” MaryAnn says. “But she came out, said, ‘Billy took my money.’ That was it. I never liked him anyway.”
Billy was told to leave, and he did so. MaryAnn never saw him again. But he didn’t go away. He called many times, particularly after he discovered that Skyler had a new boyfriend named Daniel Dyer.
MaryAnn says Dan was “a nice person. Skyler felt like she was moving on with her life.”
According to court records, Skyler had Dan and some other friends over later in July, at MaryAnn’s swimming pool. Suddenly, Billy appeared from out of the trees, where he had been watching Skyler and Dan swimming.
Another day, he threatened Skyler, brandishing a blunt object wrapped in a T-shirt, saying he would use it on Dan, if he ever found Dan in the house.
Finally, in mid-August, Billy called saying he had Skyler’s driver’s license, and he wanted to bring it back. According to testimony in the court records, it wasn’t the first time he had mysteriously found something that belonged to Skyler and requested to come over to return it.
THE CRIME
Skyler came home Aug. 20, 2007, from the first day of her senior year of high school at FPC. That night, before MaryAnn went to bed just after 10 p.m., she poked her head into Skyler’s bedroom. Skyler was on the phone, so MaryAnn simply said, “Six o’clock?” Skyler nodded.
Skyler had a dentist appointment at 7:30 a.m. the next day, and MaryAnn was supposed to make sure she was up. Typically, all it took was a knock on the door, and Skyler would jump out of bed.
MaryAnn checked on the two dogs, which were sleeping on the living room floor, out of their kennel. They belonged to her friend, who was out of town. And she went to bed.
She did not know that Skyler called Dan and invited him to spend the night. She did not know Billy called the house several times and then, according to an investigator’s report, called a taxi company for a ride.
For MaryAnn, it was a usual night. She woke up several times. She did not hear the two “pops” at 1:08 am. She’s a deep sleeper, and her hearing isn’t perfect. At about 1:30 a.m., she walked down the hall and used the bathroom, right next to Skyer’s room, where she could hear TV softly through the door.
At about 3:30 a.m., MaryAnn woke up again, and walked into the living room. The dogs were still sleeping. To her left, right next to Huck’s bedroom, she noticed the closet door was open. She didn’t notice that the shotgun had been removed. She closed the door and went back to bed.
At 5 a.m., she got up and fetched the newspaper, and came back inside for breakfast.
“It was a bit late, at 6:20, when I called to her,” MaryAnn says. “There was no movement, and all these things went together. It was weird. I still hadn’t thought anything about the closet door. I went in to Huck and said, ‘There’s something wrong. I can’t get Skyler up.’ Something kept me from going in there.”
Huck entered the room. When he returned, he said, “Skyler’s dead.”
“I immediately went over to Hap, who was feeding the cat on the front porch (next door),” MaryAnn says. “I couldn’t think of any way to say it calmly. I said, ‘Skyler’s dead.’ He went and got his shotgun.”
But when Hap entered the room, he saw that it was too late to defend his daughter. She had been shot in the head. Dan, too. The shotgun from the closet was lying on the floor, next to two shells.
THE FUTURE
It has been more than three years since that night. Billy was arrested on a warrant for the murder. The case was delayed because of conflict of interest with the lawyers. And MaryAnn’s husband died, leaving her alone in the house.
But with Hap next door, she often has company. And Kyla, now 4 years old, keeps the whole family busy, as she comes bounding in from the porch, wearing a princess dress, which she sometimes changes into after preschool.
“She keeps us busy,” says Hap, who has custody of her temporarily. He says he hopes to adopt Kyla after the trial, and focus on the future.
“I’ve explained to her that I’m her grandfather,” he says. “She says, ‘’OK, Daddy.’ She wants a dad.”
Kyla runs across the yard, in and out of the shadows, past the chickens. She finds a spade and starts digging a hole in front of an old wooden shed. Hap says Kyla has a tomboy streak in her, just like Skyler did. One of his last memories of Skyler was of a fishing tournament they went on together. Skyler took second place in the tournament, and she and Hap spent quality time talking — mostly about the task at hand.
Four months later, Skyler was dead.
Watching Kyla squeeze through the fence between the two houses, Hap says of Skyler, “She was running astray,” he says. “But she got on the right track. … A lot of people in this world make mistakes, and they are allowed to correct themselves. She ran out of time.”
